In next May’s metro mayor elections, most of the candidates are not just male, pale and stale; many are are also MPs, MEPs and former national politicians now eyeing up some of the country’s most interesting electoral opportunities.

This fact has infuriated the leader of Trafford council, Sean Anstee, who on Monday, after considerable speculation, declared he will be standing as Conservative opponent to Labour’s Andy Burnham in the election for greater Manchester’s first metro mayor.

Anstee may also be male and pale, but he’ll be playing up his local lad credentials for all he’s worth in his campaign. And he’s furious at the implication that local politicians are seen as good enough to negotiate the historic, multi-million-pound devolution deals that have seen powers transferred from Whitehall to regions like greater Manchester, but are not considered good enough to deliver on the deals by becoming mayors.

Five metro mayoral elections will be held next May as part of the government’s devolution deals with greater Manchester, Liverpool, the west Midlands, the Tees Valley and the Sheffield city region. There was due to be a further mayoral election in the north east, until the devolution deal there fell apart last month.

Joe Anderson, the existing elected mayor of Liverpool city council, has already voiced similar concerns about national politicians muscling in to the new devo areas. In June, Anderson declared his rage at the suggestion from Burnham that he and other local leaders, such as Manchester leader Sir Richard Leese, lacked the right experience. He said Burnham’s remark that the Manchester mayor is “a cabinet-level job, which needs cabinet-level experience”, was ignorant and insensitive. And that was before Anderson was beaten to the Labour candidacy for the Liverpool regional mayoral by local MP Steve Rotheram

Anstee may be miles away from Anderson politically, but he too is aggrieved and disappointed at the lack of local politicians standing for the metro mayor positions.

Anstee told a fringe event held by the Localis thinktank at the Conservative party conference on Monday that whoever becomes mayor in greater Manchester next May will need to address the unequal nature of the city region. In a direct attack on Burnham, Anstee said the job should not be “a home for disillusioned MPs” but should be taken by a local leader.

Anstee, who is 29, grew up in a council house in Trafford before leaving school at 16 to take up an apprenticeship at Barclays, eventually becoming vice president at Bank of New York Mellon in Manchester. He became leader of Trafford council in 2014, aged 26, having been first elected as a councillor when he was 20. He’s the only Tory leader in the 10 greater Manchester councils, where all the other nine councils Labour. “It’s an obvious statement that it’s going to be tough but I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think it was winnable,” Anstee told the Guardian.

Anstee said devolution is an opportunity to continue the process of undoing centuries of centralisation. And for a Conservative leader, he’s surprisingly keen on redistribution of wealth, saying that the new way of local working has to ensure not just that prosperous areas thrive, but also places that don’t have businesses in their patch, especially after 2020, when local government funding will rely on business rates. “There’s got to be something in it for them, both for the redistribution of funds, but also for the ability of the workforce to access jobs,” he says.

Anstee says there there are “vast swaths” of greater Manchester and the rest of the country that don’t feel particularly represented either by the Labour party or by the political system more generally. “This is our opportunity to try and do something a little different and put forward a view that is yes Conservative but place-based across all of greater Manchester,” he says. “So we need to continue to support those parts of the conurbation that are powering ahead, but make sure we don’t leave anybody behind at the same time.”

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